I run out of the bathroom. “New Mexico,” I say. I grab my shorts and tank top and pull them on. I search around the room for my phone charger.
“What about it?” Bea says.
“There are no restrictions. No parental permission, no waiting period. Annabelle, can we—”
“Let’s do it.” Annabelle stands up and starts getting her stuff together.
Bea looks at her phone. “Albuquerque is fourteen hours from here,” she says. “That’s really far. I don’t think…”
I grab the pizza box out of the trash and copy the clinic phone numbers down on it.
Annabelle and I start calling. But each clinic we call is slammed, and each receptionist says the same thing—they are booked with women from Texas.
“I’m looking for an appointment for an abortion,” Annabelle says to the third or fourth clinic on her list. She shoots me a thumbs-up. “Yeah,” she says to the woman on the phone. “We can do that.” She scribbles a date onto the pizza box. She hands the phone to me. “She has some questions for you.”
My phone buzzes with another phone call coming through. Mom flashes on the screen, and I send her call to voice mail.
I make the appointment for July fifth and hang up the phone. I have enough money. I can do this on my own, just like I wanted to all along.
“Next stop, New Mexico, ladies,” Annabelle says. She shoulders her tote bag. “Let’s go.”
We get in Buzzi and leave Alamo, head north onto the highway, toward New Mexico.
My phone dings. It’s my mom. I tried to call you. Everything okay?
I pause, my fingers hovering over the keys. For just a second I think about calling her and telling her where we are going and why. But when I imagine her voice on the phone, and how she pauses after she hears something she doesn’t like, dread washes over me. I can’t do it.
Yep! Just wanted to say hi. So … HIIII.
:) Hope you’re having fun.
Thanks Mom.
Annabelle insists she can drive straight through, but Bea and I veto that and decide on ten hours, max. We call ahead to get a motel for tonight to avoid repeating another Boobie Bungalow bungle.
Ten hours doesn’t seem that long on the face of it. You can binge-watch a series in ten hours and barely notice. Play practice can last that long. You can sleep for ten hours and wake up feeling really good. But ten hours driving in a car is another thing altogether. Especially for Annabelle, who has to sit in the same position hour after hour. “I’m used to it,” she claims. “From flying international. You hunker down and accept your fate.”
Bea wants me to sit in the back where I can stretch out and rest, but I want to ride shotgun where the view is better. Where I can see every mile sign, every truck stop, and every billboard as it vanishes behind us.
“I can’t believe we have to drive all the way to New Mexico,” I say. “Texas is a joke.”
“This should have been over and done with for you already, and it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that you have to miss out on your future because of one mistake you made in the past. I am so sick of old white dudes telling us what we can and can’t do with our bodies. It feels as if I need written permission to live every morning. There shouldn’t be a question of who is qualified to make a decision about your body. I was a volunteer escort at the clinic in Victorville before it closed, and you wouldn’t believe what the women went through. The protesters, first of all. It’s beyond scary and humiliating to have to run through a gauntlet of dickheads screaming at you.
“Most of the women at our clinic were low income, mostly African American and Latina, scraping up six hundred bucks for the procedures from God knows where, plus taking time off work, which had to cost them more money. Once our clinic got a bomb threat, so that meant we had to evacuate the clinic, and none of the procedures got done that day. Texas doesn’t give two shits about women or the babies they force them to have.” Annabelle is talking really loudly. I lower my visor, and in the mirror, I see Bea. She’s very pointedly looking at her phone, clearly trying to ignore Annabelle. “Fucking hypocrites. You went to the clinic in Houston, right, Camille?”
At that, Bea glances up, and she and I make eye contact.
“Yeah, I did.”